The carbonyl carbon atom of the carbonyl group of carboxylic acid derivatives is readily attacked by nucleophiles due to its positive partial charge. The arising addition intermediate product can again decompose by elimination of a leaving group. In this manner, it is possible to perform a substitution of the respective functional group in an addition elimination mechanism and to achieve mutual conversion of the various carboxylic acid derivatives. Therein, the reactivity of the carbonyl carbon greatly depends on the properties of the respective functional group. Therein, electron providing substituents with +I or +M effect, respectively, decrease the reactivity, electron drawing substituents with −I effect increase it. The following gradation of the carbonyl activity results from this, wherein only the most common carboxylic acid derivates are cited for clarity:

Since carboxylic acids or their deprotonated carboxylate ions, respectively, have the least carbonyl activity, as readily apparent, they can be obtained by alkaline hydrolysis from the remaining carboxylic acid derivates. Therein, the balance of these base-induced reactions usually is virtually completely on the side of the carboxylic acid or of the resonance-stabilized carboxylate ion deprotonated in a following step, respectively. Therein, the reaction proceeds according to the following general mechanism:

Therein, various variants for performing such reactions are known to the person skilled in the art from the prior art.
However, depending on the respective carboxylic acid derivative, multiple molar excess of hydroxide ions is required for performing such a reaction. Therein, the circumstance is to be regarded as disadvantageous in the known methods, that the required hydroxide ions mostly added in the form of sodium or potassium hydroxide are consumed during the reaction and present a comparatively high cost factor resulting in rise in cost of the method as well as of the corresponding products.
Therefore, the object of the present invention is to provide a more inexpensive method for alkaline hydrolysis of carboxylic acid derivatives to carboxylic acids.